The Understorey Book One of The Leaving Series Read online

  “Dude? Where are you?” Jesse asked, wrapping his knuckles on my head.

  I tossed my head back from his reach and looked his way. He was really starting to annoy me lately. Maybe I was spending too much time with him. The difference between medicine and poison is in the dose right?

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “No, you’re not. What is up with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said, turning my stare back to where Jules sat.

  She wasn’t there and I got up in a panic.

  “Uh, see you later. I gotta’ go.”

  “What? What’s up with you!” He shouted as I escaped the cafeteria.

  I pounced through the double doors, peering down the center hall, the left, and then the right. She was gone. My shoulders slumped at the loss. Until tomorrow Julia Jacobs.

  The following day I found out that I shared neither my first nor second class with Jules. I wanted to see her so badly that I was seriously considering ditching third period of the second day of school just to search for her. I decided against it though. Mainly, I chickened out. No sense in getting detention unless Jules was going to be there right? I compromised with reason and decided that right after lunch I would convince Millie in the office to let me look at Jules’ schedule, bribe her if I had to.

  I walked into the cafeteria resigned to my plan but those plans promptly fizzled once I saw Jules sitting at her table all by herself again. She had a sack of carrots on her lap and her feet, once again, rested on the chair beside her. I got a small kick out of the fact that it was how she liked to sit, sort of unashamed. That’s what it was. She was brazen. She had her nose buried in yet another book. When I got closer I noticed it was George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. I loved that book. Boy, was she exasperating to me. That’s it. No more, I thought. I walked to her table and sat in the chair across from her.

  “I love that book,” I said.

  Look at me, I wordlessly demanded, swallowing hard. I’m sweating. Oh no. I’m nervous. Very, very nervous. I wiped sweat from my forehead and felt my longish hair stick to it. She didn’t even look at me, let alone respond. So, it was going to be like that.

  “Carrots, huh?” I asked, obviously reaching.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Those are good for the eyes, I’ve heard. I see they’ve done wonders for your teeth too. Texas A&M did that study a few years ago. Did you hear about it?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “No? Well a few years ago they developed a carrot that helps people absorb forty one percent more calcium than when they consume a regular carrot. Interesting right? Genetically altered vegetables?”

  No reply.

  “I certainly found that interesting,” I said, laughing nervously. “You may not, or maybe you did, I’m not sure. It’s certainly something a braniac should find interesting. You’re a braniac, right? I mean, you’re always reading, so I assume. Not that I claim to be a braniac or anything. I’m of pretty average intelligence, I think.”

  I was drowning.

  “Yeah, so,” I continued, digging my embarrassment hole deeper. Hell, it was so deep I could bury myself in it. Good thing, too. I wanted to be buried. “I heard they collaborated with Baylor’s College of Medicine in Houston.” Nothing. I was beginning to think the book was attached to her nose. “Houston’s a pretty crazy town or so I’ve heard. Supposedly the humidity is heck on girls’ hair. Your hair doesn’t seem to take on that much humidity. I’ve never seen it frizz anyway.”

  I drummed my fingertips on the table.

  “As I was saying,” I said digging my grave further than needed, might as well go for gold here, “it’s obviously done wonders for your teeth.”

  She stopped her reading and scanned my eyes. Stop talking! I commanded myself.

  “Yeah, your teeth are big and a pretty white.” See, that wasn’t so bad. “You could mistake them for a horse’s.” Nice, very nice.

  I nervously laughed. She didn’t. When I was nervous, I resorted to inadvertent insults.

  She looked at me but turned her focus back on her book. Sweat was dripping down my neck. I carried my fingers through my hair and down the nape to remove any evidence of my impending social death. No sense in letting her see the physical evidence as well as the emotional proof that I was drowning.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to compare your teeth to a horse’s. I was only trying to point out how large they were. That is, I mean to say, that they are larger than most people’s. But! Perfectly proportionate to your face. Your face isn’t huge or anything! Your face seems pretty average in its proportions. Yes, very well proportioned.” I sighed deeply. “What I meant to say is that you have very beautiful teeth.”

  And, scene. Very good job Mr. Gray. Your audience has accepted you for the idiot that you are. Look forward to being typecast as the bumbling fool from this point on.

  My throat was dryer than a bone. I yanked my bottled water from my bag and downed half of it. She refused to even look at me.

  “Jules,” I said, catching my breath.

  “Julia,” she corrected me.

  “Julia, obviously I’m an idiot. All I want to do is talk to you. It’s extremely hard for me to talk to you.”

  “Then you should stop.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “But you should.”

  She sat up and sighed loudly, collected her belongings and left the cafeteria.

  I sat back in my chair. I had no idea what had just happened. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Nothing came out how I’d planned them. I couldn’t stop vomiting the worst conversation I had ever had. I didn’t understand. I never had trouble talking to girls, ever. Granted, I never shared a literal lightning bolt with one of them or was ever really interested in one but, just the same, I never had trouble speaking with them. I knew Jules was going to be trouble. She was going to give me the fight of my life but I decided right then and there that I was not going to give up. The next time I saw her, I knew exactly how I was going to talk to her.

  Third period I had band and it gave me a chance to calm down a little bit, for which I was grateful and allowed me to go to my last class of the day, chemistry, a little bit more relaxed until I walked through the door to the classroom. I was immediately crushed with borderline hysteria. I gulped a breath and slid past Julia who sat at a lab table in the center of class. I chose a table in the very back and sat with Sawyer Tuttle, whom everyone just called Tut. He nodded a hello and I nodded back. I set all my stuff down and just watched her.

  She reached for her bag on the ground and her hair gracefully slid across her shoulders and back as she pulled it onto the table. She opened the bag’s flap and felt around inside for her notebook and pen and pencil. She closed the flap and laid the bag back onto the floor but as she let the bag slide off her arm and fall to the linoleum she glanced behind her to see if I was watching. I smiled and she quickly turned her head back to the front of the classroom. She looked. That was enough for me.

  That’s when I noticed Sawyer Tuttle. His eyes followed her every movement. His fists tightened when she tossed her hair behind her shoulders and I had the overpowering desire to clobber his face. I searched for a reason to justify such a violent reaction but there was none. Damn. He wasn’t doing anything repulsive. In fact, I was probably the only person in the room who even noticed him watching her; he was so subtle about it.

  Still, it felt as if he was asking me to hit him and it was bothering me that I didn’t know why. I had no claim on Jules. She wasn’t mine to get in fights over but I still wanted to and had to busy my hands in order to distract myself. Yep, Sawyer Tuttle was officially on my enemies list and for motives I couldn’t comprehend. I was in trouble.

  I officially knew what we shared as far as our schedules were concerned. On A days, Jules and I had second and third period together. On B days, we only had fourth period Chemistry together, but we shared lunches on both days, which put some color back into the way I fel
t about spending time away from a girl who essentially acted as if I were made of acid. I felt like a bonded animal. It was comical.

  Despite her apparent hatred of me, time away from Jules seemed such an uncomfortable idea. I felt slightly queasy at the prospect because I had this confusing and overwhelming urge to protect Jules and couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt that way. Jules was not exactly the kind of girl who needed defending. She was spirited, feisty. I passed her house dozens of times that first week on the way to and from school, and sometimes not even then, looking for her teal Karmann Ghia, hoping, no, desperate to know if she was at home. Just knowing where she was gave me a sense of peace and appeased the unwanted and definitely inexplicable ache I felt for her. Each class, we sat near to one another and each class I promised myself I would talk to her only to lose my nerve every single time I attempted to open my mouth.

  Whenever I was near her she made my palms sweat. More than the two hours of practice I had every day baking in the sun. Football practice was sort of a numb distraction from the things I needed to forget about. At least for the little while that I needed to forget. I especially enjoyed it during the weeks I struggled with who the new Jules was supposed to be to me. Honestly though, football was at the bottom of the list of things I wanted to do, especially after seeing Jules outside Mrs. Kitt’s class that first day of school.

  I was our high school’s quarterback, letter jacket and all, moonlighting as an academic obsessed with science. Looking back, I don’t know why I kept that fact a secret. My teachers certainly knew but I had made it very clear that I wanted no one else to know. I was afraid of the backlash I’d get from the team. I should have been proud of the fact that I was phenomenal at it right? Right. I should have been. But you didn’t have my father and you didn’t know Bramwell, West Virginia. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, my dad, Mark, was awesome. Awesome but also an out of shape ex-football star who hurt his knee senior year and wasn’t able to play college.

  He had been banking on that to get him out of Bramwell, but eventually accepted his fate as a potential lifelong resident and settled down with my mom, Shelby. Once they had me and my little sister Maddy, they were stuck here for good. That’s why he was obsessed with me playing and playing well. He wanted me to have a life outside of Bramwell and its coal mines. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t care if I made Bramwell my home or not, as long as I was happy. All her family came to live in Bramwell when they caravanned as one huge group from Oklahoma about thirty years before. Bramwell was a step up in society to her, since it had been one of the wealthiest towns in America at the turn of the century.

  Though the wealthiest in America no longer had a place in our sleepy little town, their homes remained and that’s where the very few of the wealthy-enough residing in Bramwell lived, including Jules’ family. Her mother and father were both big wigs at the coal mines my dad happened to work at. They had a flare for luxury, especially Jules’ mother. I remember Jules coming to school in elementary and junior high in the most hideous designer clothing I’d ever seen. It wasn’t until she reached high school and her mom couldn’t dress her anymore that Jules became her own girl and probably much to her mother’s dismay.

  My mom had always been a simple woman, never really needing much. The one thing my mom and pop did have going on for one another was the deepest of loves. Deeper than any of the other parents I came across in Bramwell. My dad was always really kind to my mom. Once a week, he’d pick wildflowers off Main and put them in this little ceramic pitcher she kept on the table. Two summers ago, he got really sick and had to stay in bed for a week. He made me pick the flowers for her because he knew she was expecting them.

  As I got older, I took serious notice of the way my mother and father looked at one another and knew it was something I had to have for myself. I learned early on through their example that I needed to find my hypothetical key in order to feel as happy as they did. Needless to say, I was in a hurry to love someone the way my father loved my mother. Nothing looked as comforting or as fun as that.

  It never even crossed my mind that my key was someone I would have known my entire life. I always thought I’d meet her in college or something, funny how life bites you like that.

  Jules definitely had a profound effect on me throughout those first few weeks. My life was filled with unbelievable anxiety every moment that I was awake. I did everything within my power but could not get her off my mind. I tried desperately to forget her. Every night, after dinner, I would get in my truck and tell myself to drive. Somewhere. Anywhere. Except to wherever Jules may be. That was my only rule. I forbade myself to look for Jules, convinced that I needed to break my dependence on knowing where she was, as if I could do that, but of course, every night, I meandered throughout town trying to tell myself that I wasn’t out driving to see if Jules was at Thatcher’s, or at one of the shops off Main in Bramwell’s business district, or at her home, The Perry House, on Brick that turned into Main.

  I never had trouble with schoolwork before Jules either, but she distracted me so often, even in the classes we didn’t share, that I would get home and have to try and teach myself everything I missed in class because the lessons behind the homework were never absorbed. I found myself wondering where she was, what she was doing, what she was wearing, how her hair looked, how she smelled, and what book she’d be reading at lunch the next day. And the weekends? The weekends were pure torture.

  The Friday night of the second agonizing week, I left town and drove two hours to Charleston to get my mind off her. I went to an obscure little book store and actually wandered into the self-help section. I absently trailed my fingers along the titles praying there would be one that read ‘You’re insane Elliott Gray. Stop obsessing about Julia Jacobs’ or ‘She’s just a normal girl dummy. An abnormally beautiful and intelligent girl who just happens to share literal electricity with you but that’s nothing to get so worked up about’. Can you believe it? There wasn’t, but there was one ironically entitled ‘Getting over the one you’re obsessed with’. I laughed out loud, got a few shushes, and almost picked it up but stopped myself. I do need help, I thought to myself, but not this kind. Professional help. I began to pick my way through the aisles heading toward the Fantasy section. I was still waiting on Stefanie Conrad’s new novel to come out and wondered if it was there.

  I took a right into the section and my heart nearly stopped cold where I stood. Jules was there. Reading from a book and had absolutely no idea that I was looking at her. I began to panic and my stomach tied into knots that would rival any sailor’s. I escaped the aisle without detection and found solace one row over. I knelt down, cursing my ridiculous height, and ran my fingers through my hair trying to think. Gotta’ get out of here, I thought. Can’t let her catch you. She’ll skin you alive and you’ll ruin any chance of talking to her again.

  I shot up, kept my head buried in my neck and headed straight for the door. I could not have gotten out fast enough. I was confused, agitated. I leaned against the door of my truck and dug my hand into my pocket to find my keys. No! No! No! No! No! I left them inside the jacket I had strung over a reading chair inside. If my keys hadn’t been inside that store I would have said goodbye to one of my nicest jackets, that’s how eager I was to get out of there.

  I thought about waiting for her to leave but didn’t want to risk being the real life example of the predator inside that stalker book if she saw me camped out in my truck or at a nearby shop. Plus, she knew my truck. If she hadn’t seen it coming in she would definitely spot it coming out being that it was right in front of the entrance.

  I hated the idea of her thinking I was watching her. Why should I care now, right? When I’ve been watching at school and searching the town for her? Because, technically, back at home I was watching for her not at her. Yup, I had to go back in. I gave myself a little pep talk and strolled back into the store convinced she’d probably never even see me as long as I was quick. I opened the door and the litt
le bell attached to the handle, rang. All eyes shot toward me but returned to their own business, except for one pair. Jules’ pair. She was in the checkout line purchasing her book. My face went flush and I tripped over a chair.

  Her eyebrows pinched in confusion then seethed with anger. She thinks I’m following her. Damn it! Why did I have to pick this store? Of all stores? Why did I have to leave my keys in that stupid jacket in this stupid store?

  I picked up the coat with a yank and headed back out toward my truck without giving her a second glance and shoved the store’s door open with all my might. I had never been so angry with myself in my entire life. I wish I had stayed home and played board games with my mom and pop or called Jesse and see if he wasn’t with a girl that night but I didn’t. Instead, I had daftly removed any sort of minuscule chance of making something real with the one girl I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  The drive home gave me the opportunity to analyze what had happened over and over in my mind and by the time I had arrived, according to my calculations, the atom bomb might as well have detonated inside that store. I demolished any hope of a future with Julia Jacobs. I stormed off to my room, ignoring my parents’ stares. I slammed the door behind me and kicked on my stereo before toppling onto the bed and laid there staring at the plastered ceiling until I noticed I still had that insipid jacket on. I sprang off my bed, tore off the jacket and threw it across the room and sank back onto the bed with enough force that my hair landed in my face. I brushed it over my head when I heard a knock at the door and laid my arm across my eyes.

  “Elliott? Honey, are you okay?” My mom sang in her deep southern accent.

  “Yes mama,” I muttered beneath the crook of the arm draped over my face.

  “Can I come in baby?”

  “Sure mom.”

  I didn’t budge. She walked into the room and I could hear her little footsteps stride across the wood floor before she lay on the bed next to me. I peeked underneath my arm and smiled at her as she folded her hands across her stomach. No matter how angry I was at myself I could never take it out on the one person who knew me the best.